PART 1 RONIN (47 ) Movie Review

The Loyal 47 Ronin
47 Samurai

The tale has been filmed many times, but Kenji Mizoguchi's 1942 two-part epic of Seika Mayama's story is the best remembered and the most gripping. Part one chronicles how the early 18th-century samurai warriors of Lord Asano set out to avenge their leader, who was forced by an enemy to commit seppuku (harakiri, to use the more vulgar term). In part two, vengeance is theirs. This wartime production—known in Japan as The Loyal 47 Ronin—was designed as a total sensory experience for Japanese audiences, and was filmed on a scale that was new to Mizoguchi and to the Japanese film industry in general. The detail within each sequence, whether it be a huge vista or an intimate interior, is what sets Mizoguchi's direction apart here, and that passion for historical, physical, and emotional accuracy would be seen in his subsequent, superior masterworks, such as Life of Oharu and Ugetsu.

NEXT STOP … Sansho the Bailiff, Ugetsu, Seven Samurai

1942 111m/C JP D: Kenji Mizoguchi. VHS FCT